I tried to find my passion in a strip club.
No one would hire me to DJ at a real party because, as much as it hurt, I had no skill. My ability to mix two 4/4 beats together sounded like gunfire, not beats to dance to.
So a distant friend who was also a Carny (kids carnival worker) got me a gig playing at a strip club. I still can’t get the smell out of my nostrils from the first visit. It smelt somewhere in-between horse urine and pig farts.
My buddy called it the meat market.
Nothing in that strip club was left to the imagination. And I got to DJ there many times.
But after a short stint, they relocated me downstairs to the nightclub below the strip club (still technically a strip club) because the owner thought I had some skills (not really but I always played his favorite Jimmy Barnes tracks before we opened).
I had to get 45 strippers to like me, otherwise they’d tell the owner to fire me.
Let’s just say Britney Spears’s “Toxic” and Jagged Edge’s “Let’s get married” became my new favorite songs. I ended up becoming their favorite person. Why?
Unlike everyone else they met, I didn’t try to hit on them or touch their private parts. I just talked to them like humans doing a job to pay their bills and feed their families. So, they nicknamed me their “little brother.”
Respect gets you a bloody long way.
I thought DJing was my passion. I became so delusional that I chased it all the way into the underground sex trade of a strip club. That’s right, strip clubs often lead to illegal prostitution.
The even rougher part of the strip trade is the drugs.
The workers become hooked on them because they get them in the club.
Once they’re addicted to whatever angel dust they put up their nose, they’re metaphorically chained to strip club poles to pay off their debts. Otherwise another evil enters their life: violence.
After 2.5 years I escaped to a better place. I stopped looking for passion in the darkness and stepped into the light.
I get many messages with “How can I find my passion” every year. Finding your passion is the ultimate form of masturbation. Let’s discuss.
You already have a passion
People act like they don’t have a passion already.
Yet they do.
The problem is “find your passion” gets so badly glamorized by InstaGlam that people think their passion should be more grandiose than it is.
They think they should wake up with a green smoothie, perfect sunshine, no problems and the right mindset, and their life’s symphony will simply pour out of them like it did for Beethoven.
Wrong.
You already have passions. You’re just ignoring them. Look at your habits for clues as they are hidden passions.
1 + 1 = 3
To turn a habit into a passion you need to unchain your mind from society’s jail bars. The 1+1= 3 mindset is the idea there are no rules. That we’re all making up this find your passion sh*t as we go.
No one has truly found their forever-passion. It’s a moving target, an imperfect science. Once you break free of the idea there are rules or things you must do to find your passion it’s easy to find one (for a while).
1+1=3 is a bias towards optimism. It’s the belief you’ll find what you’re looking for if you’ll only get to work and stop masturbating over passion fantasies.
1+1=3 if you believe it does. That’s the level of belief you need to actually find a passion and be the Elvis Presley of a niche.
Embrace the suck
Too many people never find their passion because they’re unwilling to embrace the suck.
This term comes from the navy seal world. It’s the ability to accept present discomfort in order to reach future success.
Finding your passion and pursuing it isn’t supposed to be easy. If it was we’d all be doing it.
People have fantasies about my passion for online writing. They think I sit here and type words while laying on Cloud 9, wearing a Pikachu onesie, and smoking a big fat one.
What they don’t see is the hours of research, the long hours, and the “I haven’t seen you enough this week” pleas from my wife to spend more time with her.
No passion comes easy. The better question is “what are you willing to give up to pursue a passion?”
Too many people want flaming tacos and to eat them too.
Stop asking experts
I’m not an expert. I can barely wake up, dress myself, and wipe my own ass, seriously. I have no idea. Neither do all these other guru influencers selling protein shakes for $5 commissions.
Throw sh*t at the wall. See what sticks.
Passion gets unlocked through experimentation.
The career lie of finding passion
Part of this mindf*ck that is finding your passion is due to BS HR departments. They sell the lie to employees at corporations that they are on their way to finding their passion.
Or worse, that they’ve already found it.
God damn. A cubicle with fluorescent lighting, white walls, and death grey furniture is so far from finding your passion it’s not funny.
Fake career paths and finding-passion-speeches given by big business are done to lure innocent victims into the dungeons of their skyscrapers.
They couldn’t give a flying crap about your passion.
They need your time, attention, and soul to make a profit from and give stockholders a big cheesy smile.
Ignore the PR of HR.
Passion is found in the boring parts
Too many people don’t find their passion or live it because they think the boring parts are a red flag.
“I didn’t have fun today mommy. It’s time to quit and find a new passion.”
Writer Billy Oppenheimer told me “find the thing where you like even the boring parts.” Not all days will be filled with glitter cannons and rainbow g-strings. Some days are just blah!
Like today, writing sucked for me. I’m not quitting despite my sad face. I’m gonna get back up on the horse and keep riding the rodeo.
You must do it too.
Dark places can lead to passion
Through the depths of mental illness all those years back, I stumbled across my passion for writing.
Not by looking for it.
But by asking myself “what don’t I want anymore?’ That led me to fight the dark thoughts and start another phase of life.
This technique is what I call an anti-passion. It’s inverting the problem of passion to find a new solution.
Anything can pay the toilet flushing bill
One of the reasons this find my passion mumbo jumbo is so strongly believed in is because many people want to earn a living from what they love.
I get it.
The reality is anything can pay the bills though. Too many people give up a passion because they think it won’t lead them to make an income from it.
I mean, I can’t believe people want to read my work online. Why me?
No freaking idea, but it’s bloody beautiful mate. When I was growing up, school told me that writers were these broke, borderline homeless people, with yellow teeth, bad breath, and no chance of paying the rent.
Turns out this image of a writer is BS. Screw you school. Oh, and some people say I got lucky with finding my passion. You know what, f*ck you if you think that. A bias for execution led me to passion. Nothing else.
Reminder: any passion can make you an income.
What finding passion really is
Asking the how do I find my passion question is nothing more than overthinking and procrastination — a double whammy.
What you become passionate about is the result of daily execution. Doing the work is only the way. This question only arises due to a lack of execution — even laziness, if you will.
If you want to find a passion in life you have to experiment, take risks, and execute to discover one.
Everything else is mental masturbation. It’s asking a question that doesn’t have an answer, which will cause you to run in circles asking the same question repeatedly — also known as the definition of insanity.
Less passion, more execution.
The magnificent solution to “how do I find my passion”
What if the cliches of find my passion and find my purpose are wrong?
Instead, what I’ve learned the hard way is to follow your obsession. Forget about whether it’s fashionable, conventional, monetizable, or a saturated niche.
These are all capitalist distractions.
Obsession doesn’t need motivation. There’s no barrier to entry or permission slip needed. You do it because it’s impossible for you not to do.
The real answer is to let an obsession take over your life. Let it become a form of crack you’re addicted to. That’s how you go from searching for the invisible to finding what is right bang-smack in front of your sexy face.
